Information sources supply signals which are typically bursty in nature. That is, the data signals supplied to a packet transmission system have periods of activity and inactivity. It is also known that the individual packets in a particular transmission channel may experience random delay between a transmitter and corresponding receiver. The bursty nature of the signals and the random delays experienced by the packets cause distortion in the signals being reconstructed in a receiver. This distortion is manifested by unwanted gaps in the data signal. Additionally, valid gaps may be eliminated. Such distortion is extremely undesirable because of the resulting erroneous signals.
One attempt at eliminating the distortion resulting from the transmission of packets is to use a so-called time stamp value only. A time stamp is a measure of the random delay experienced by the particular packet during transmission. One such time stamp arrangement is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,506,358 issued to W. A. Montgomery on Mar. 19, 1985. It was suggested that the time stamp could be used to build out the transmission delay to a overall value for each received packet. Use of the time stamp value alone reduces but does not eliminate the randomness of the delay experienced by the packets. Therefore, undesirable gaps still appear in the data signal which cause distortion in the reconstructed information signal. Again, such distortion is undesirable.